The first thing he saw was a woman in men’s clothes sitting across from him on a crate. A kerosene lamp threw jumping shadows across the basement walls. He tried to move—his hands and feet were tied.
He tried to shout—the gag blocked it. And then he recognized her. Despite the clothes, despite the dim light, he recognized the mother of that girl.
Animal fear filled Kevin’s eyes. “Hello, Kevin.” Eleanor’s voice was calm, almost gentle.
“I spent a long time thinking about what to do with you. Peters was simple—he’s older, his life was mostly behind him. But you’re young. You had your whole life ahead of you.”
Had. She took out the razor and slowly opened it. The blade flashed in the lamplight.
“You know what I heard yesterday in the tavern? You bragging. Laughing. My daughter still wakes up screaming at night, and you laugh?”
Kevin Gold howled like a wounded animal despite the gag. Tears and mucus ran down his face. He fought the ropes so hard they cut into his wrists.
But Eleanor did not waver. She worked slowly, methodically, with the same precision she used at her machine. Only now the material was not steel, but the living flesh of the man who had touched her daughter.
“You know what’s worst?” she said as she worked. “You didn’t even think of it as a crime. To you it was entertainment. A joke to tell over drinks.”
“Peters spent a week afterward bragging at work about what a big man he was. And you? You figured you had the right because your father owned the store, because money and influence could bury anything.”
It took longer than it had with Peters. Kevin was younger, stronger, fought harder. Twice he nearly broke loose, and Eleanor had to use the chloroform again.
By morning it was done. The young man lay on the cold basement floor, tied to a pipe, alive—but never again the same. Eleanor left him there after making sure the bleeding had stopped.
Not out of mercy. She wanted him alive. Alive and remembering. Kevin Gold was found only a day later.
His father became alarmed when his son failed to come home for a second night. Police were called, all his usual haunts checked. He was found by the same groundskeeper who swept near the abandoned houses.
He heard groaning from the basement and went down to look. What he saw made the old man stagger back into the street and vomit in the ditch. Mr. Gold, the department store owner, arrived at the hospital in his company car.
The doctors met him with grim faces. “He’ll live. Physically, he’ll recover. But…” Gold, a large man with a bulldog face, sank into a chair and wept.
Not politely. Not quietly. He sobbed like a child. His only son. His heir. The one meant to carry on the family name. Now there would be no grandchildren from him.
The town buzzed harder than ever. Two cases in two weeks—that was no coincidence. Somebody was taking revenge.
But who? And for what? Detective Warren, of course, connected the two incidents.
Peters and Gold were friends, drank together often. Maybe they had shared enemies. Or shared sins. Warren visited Gold in the hospital.
The young man lay under IV fluids, pale as a sheet. He answered reluctantly, contradicted himself. First he said three unknown men had attacked him, then that it was a woman, then again that he remembered nothing, that it was all a blur.
Warren watched him for a long time and then asked directly: “Susan Carter. Remember her? The nursing student.” Gold jerked as if shocked.
Fear flashed in his eyes. “I don’t know any Susan Carter,” he rasped, and turned to the wall. Warren got nothing more out of him…
